Category: Poverty & income gap
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The Real War on the Poor
by James A. Bacon Beware the meddlers and the do-gooders. With friends like them, poor people don’t need enemies. Two data points from today’s newspapers… First, the Chesterfield County Planning Commission has asked staff to explore options for keeping payday lenders out of the county, on the grounds that they “prey” on the poor. This…
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Decline of White Patriarchal Privilege at UVa?
by James A. Bacon The privilege enjoyed by middle-aged white males in American society is a source of great consternation to liberals and progressives everywhere. Ironically, the places where middle-aged white male privilege runs the deepest is in the very set of institutions that decries middle-aged white privilege the loudest, those centers of liberal and…
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How Team Obama-Bernanke Oppresses the Poor
If you’re truly a defender of the “1%” and indifferent to the plight of the poor in American society, don’t waste your vote on Mitt Romney. Barack Obama is your man. While the president proposes addressing society’s unequal distribution of income by raising tax rates on the wealthy, his administration stealthily enriches the rich and…
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Poverty and Death in the Coalfields
by James A. Bacon On April 5, 2010, an explosion erupted in the Upper Big Branch coal mine of the Massey Energy Company, sending a fireball shooting through its long underground corridors. Twenty-nine miners were killed. It was the worst United States coal mining disaster since 1970. In his newly published book, “Thunder on the…
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Where is Sarah When We Need Her?
By Peter Galuszka It seems so underwhelming. There was the hurricane that went elsewhere. A retrograde platform. A vice presidential candidate in search of a fact checker. A lame speech by POTUS-to-be. Even Clint Eastwood couldn’t make our day. Flash back four years. John McCain stunned the nation with Sarah Palin, the tough hockey mom…
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Forgetting Slavery for Baseball in Richmond
By Peter Galuszka In Virginia, it never ceases to amaze how the white elite finds it so easy to extract the painful history of slavery from whatever it is they are trying to do. In his first year in office, for instance, Gov. Robert F. McDonnell went astonishingly brain-dead when he completely forgot to mention…
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Why Tricycle Gardens Rocks
by James A. Bacon Everyone has heard the Chinese proverb, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” With a little tweaking, the aphorism could well be adapted to the philosophy of Tricycle Gardens, the urban farming nonprofit that…
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Dulles Rail and Disadvantaged Business Enterprises
by James A. Bacon The Dulles Rail project plods inexorably forward. The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority has issued a Request for Qualifications Information (RFQI) to solicit qualifications statements from potential bidders on the 11.5-mile rail line. Companies who submit applications will be narrowed down to a short list of five firms. The contract will be…
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Richmond’s Buses To Nowhere
By Peter Galuszka Inner city issues seem to be a trend this week on the blog so here are a few more points about the so-called “under-class” as some define lower income, under privileged people. The locus is Richmond, the state capital that despite its pretensions is actually a working class town with plenty of…
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Virginia’s Cost of Living Problem
by James A. Bacon In 2011 the Washington region was the second most prosperous Metropolitan Statistical Area in the country when ranked by the average annual wage. But adjust wages for the cost of living, and the region fell to 18th place among the nation’s largest 51 largest MSAs, according to an exercise conducted by…
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4th of July Ruminations upon the Income Gap
by James A. Bacon America, we are being reminded on this 4th of July, was a lot more equal in the time of John Adams and Benjamin Franklin than it is today. Historical research suggests that the Top 1% accounted for 8.5% of the proto-nation’s income in 1776 versus 20% today — a difference that…
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UNDERCLASS LOVER
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by
in Business and Economy, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, LGBQT, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, Transportation, Uncategorized, Water-waste waterI want to be an underclass lover Lay it down like a big ole’ brother No mind who gets stuck With the leftover I get my F&%# Without too much workover Don’t care about the deficit Don’t give a damn about the debt ’cause when it comes to lov’in You ain’t seen noth’ yet Ya…
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Behind Big Sister
By Peter Galuszka Reading this blog and studying the conservative political movement makes for some curious, if not hilarious, observations. It’s always interesting to note the tenets that have evolved. Selfishness is good. You must also be moral and self-disciplined. The free market is a magical corrective. All government and regulation are bad. Altruism and…
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Bring Back Stigma
Treat men like Desmond Hatchett, father of 30 welfare children, as the creeps they are. by James A. Bacon Desmond Hatchett, of Knoxville, Tenn., has petitioned the state of Tennessee for relief of his child-support obligations. It seems that the 33-year-old minimum-wage earner has to divide 50 percent of his earnings with the 11 women…
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NoVa Prosperity Under Pressure
Northern Virginia remains the economic engine of the state but it faces major challenges. Job creation isn’t keeping up with population growth and income inequality is growing, concludes the Commonwealth Institute in a new report, “Under Pressure: The State of Working Northern Virginia.” Employment grew at a strong pace in 2011: The region added 25,000…